


Wings to Fly

by hufflepirate



Series: Voltron Pacific Rim AU [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Jaeger Pilots, Jaegers (Pacific Rim), Nervousness, The Drift (Pacific Rim)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-19 02:12:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11303601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hufflepirate/pseuds/hufflepirate
Summary: The day the newly-improved Voltron jaeger is revealed, Shiro is nervous about stepping into his new role as not only the head of Voltron, but also its wings.  Luckily, he has teammates and friends to support him, and luckily, the drift is strong.





	Wings to Fly

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to "Chasing Rabbits, Chasing Hope." You probably (?) need to read that to understand what's happening here, but basically Voltron worked differently before and it was awful for Shiro. Coran figured out a way to help and this is that plan coming to fruition.

Shiro's left palm was sweating so profusely that his brain had convinced itself his prosthetic hand was sweaty, too. He wiped both of them on the thighs of his drivesuit, which had been redesigned with the jaeger itself. The weight of the extra sensors across his arms, shoulders, and upper back made everything feel very real, and he hadn't even _seen_  Voltron's new upgrades yet.

Hunk, always the nervous one, read his unease immediately, crossing the hallway outside the hangar and draping one strong, heavy arm over Shiro's shoulders. Shiro leaned into the embrace, trying to let go of his nerves before they were called into the hangar for their first training run with the wings. Letting himself get tied up in knots would only worry the others and make drifting harder.

He could already feel the ghost of a vague ache in his arms, the feeling he got when Keith or Pidge felt afraid and tried to pull away from their connections so the others wouldn't notice. It felt like his limbs were being squeezed, and if they both did it at once, he almost inevitably chased the rabbit and dragged the others with him, the feeling in his arms dragging him back to that last horrifying crash of his career as a fighter pilot.

No. Better not to scare them. He couldn't pretend not to be afraid once the neural link started, but if he could calm himself down now, he could keep it in check inside Voltron.

Lance's eyes had followed Hunk across the hall and Shiro could tell the boy was trying to read him, to see what Hunk had responded to. No use in pretending now, either, then. That was still a weird thing. He was used to playing brave before he got in his plane, but the teens around him were all about to know his feelings anyway, and even if they weren't, they knew how to read him like no one had before.

Something in his gut twisted. No. He still couldn't make himself lay his fear on the kids before he had to. He could get on top of this. He could.

Shiro forced himself to smile. "Anybody have any really convincing flying dreams lately? I could use some advice about having wings." It wasn't a good joke, but it would do. It was enough acknowledgement of his nerves to get it out there, but not enough to make the teens responsible for fixing him. He knew they knew he felt broken sometimes, but he never wanted them to think they had to fix it.

"We were _really_  careful with the design, Shiro," Pidge said, "Coran thought about _everything_  and then Allura and I looked over it after he smuggled her the plans from the engineering staff, and we're _positive_  the system will have the flexibility to read whatever signals you actually end up sending out. It's gonna be badass."

That wasn't an answer about making the wings work, really, but until he stepped into the jaeger, he wasn't going to _get_  an answer. It was just going to have to be good enough. He'd been mostly in over his head in all the design meetings about the upgrade, but he knew they'd built the initial prototypes so they could respond to a wide range of muscle movements. The chief engineer had insisted it was most practical for him to use his arms as wings, but Coran and Allura, who had come up with the idea in the first place, had been equally insistent that he would still know he had arms and it would be better for the wings to respond to shoulder blade movements, and he hoped Pidge was right and they'd managed to make it work with both.

"Don't tell me you're getting cold feet about being just like the rest of us," Keith joked. With anyone else, the words would have rankled, but Shiro still remembered how vehemently Keith had reacted the one time Shiro suggested that he could be the head of Voltron if he needed to be. He'd rebelled so strongly against the idea that Shiro had almost felt the emotion of it himself, even outside the neural link.

Shiro laughed. "Never. Just as long as you guys promise to behave."

Lance gasped, clutching at his sternum as though he were offended. "Are you saying _we_ might not  _behave_?"

Shiro laughed.  "Don't think I won't ditch the wings to tell you off if you start running off half-cocked again," he teased back at Lance.

"Nah," Hunk said, "It takes at least two legs to really run."

"Not that Lance won't knock us over trying," Keith teased. There was an edge to it, too much of an edge, and that wasn't any better for going into the drift than Shiro letting himself get worked up was.

Shiro's emotions were swirling again, torn between his excitement that he might  _finally_  be able to stop worrying he'd push Voltron's other minds too hard and his fear, now that the day was here, that the original plans had been right all along and the robot would pull itself apart without him focusing all his attention on sorting through the thousand little messes drifting with four other people caused.

He sighed. "Keith-" he started, hoping he could cut off the argument before it started and go into the drift only worried about himself.

"No, I know, I was joking," Keith said, reading something out of Shiro's seriousness, even though Shiro couldn't be sure he was picking up the right thing. "You're, uh, you're getting way better at kicking lately."

The words weren't really aimed at Lance, and they weren't really an apology, but Shiro hoped Lance knew Keith well enough by now for him to understand it was at least a genuine attempt at peace.

"We'll have to try some flying kicks once I get us in the air," Shiro told Lance, hoping to smooth things the rest of the way over. "But I bet I put us on our asses a bunch of times before we're ready for that."

Pidge giggled at that, and Shiro wasn't sure whether she was laughing at the thought of him knocking Voltron over or the fact that he'd used the word 'ass.' He'd tried his hardest not to curse around his teammates, just out of principle, but it wasn't like half the compound didn't curse like sailors. He wasn't sure why it was only funny when he did it. But he'd take anything that made the tension in his chest uncurl, just now.

Coran came out of the door to the control room with Allura behind him, both all smiles. "That's it!" he exclaimed, "They're ready for us!"

Initially, Shiro hadn't been sure what to think about Coran and Allura waiting on standby in the Castle in case Voltron got out of control, but now it was just good knowing their closest friends would be right there for backup.

Shiro pulled out of Hunk's embrace, stepping toward Coran and reaching for a handshake that the other man turned into a forearm clasp instead. Coran pulled Shiro close enough to thump him on the back with his other arm, and Shiro let him, leaning in to make a real (if brief) hug out of it. He felt himself smiling, genuinely this time, as he let go.

"You're gonna be great," Coran said, aiming it at all of them, or maybe just at Shiro. It was still hard to believe sometimes that the goofy old soldier had the kind of clout it took to get the newest and most expensive of the jaegers redesigned purely because he said it should be. He'd had a gnawing fear, before the project got approved, that Coran might tell someone his secret, but the old Altean never had. Not once, and not to anyone. Not even to Allura, but of course, they drifted, so he was sure she knew how afraid he'd always been of hurting the others.

Allura stepped forward to kiss his cheek and he tried not to blush. She'd looked at him differently, the day she picked his fears out of the drift with Coran, studying him through lunch until he felt like a bug under a microscope, but he couldn't think of anyone he'd rather have fighting for him.

"Princess, if this goes wrong, you'll have to tell me what to do about being the one in the jaeger with no idea what they're doing. I suspect these guys are about to show me up."

Allura laughed, "I always had _some_  idea.  And I'm sure you will too, once you're in there."

The hangar's huge doors whooshed open, and whatever else they might have said would have to wait. Allura reached for Coran's hand, grabbing it like she always did right before they went into the drift. Shiro wondered what that would be like, sometimes, wondered how it would feel to step into the drift knowing it was just the two of you and you were already connected.

Before he could wonder too hard, Pidge grabbed his hand like she'd caught him looking, and he let his team pull him along with them. Even when he was as ready to go as they were, their effusive energy often made him feel like he was being swept along in a current stronger than himself. Now, with the weight of all of this being _real_ pressing down on his shoulders, he felt like their excitement was the only thing moving his limbs on the walk to the jaeger.

 _They're walking me down there like we're already Voltron_ , he thought to himself, smirking suddenly at the thought of it. He imagined a set of wings behind him, attached to his shoulder blades, and wondered what it was going to be like to feel them once he was inside the machine.

There was often a lot of jostling between his teammates as they climbed into their jaeger, a function of a narrow doorway and an approach designed for a team of two instead of a team of five, but this time Shiro found himself at the center of it, taking more 'accidental' elbows than usual.

Pidge let go of his hand when they got close enough for her to slip through the door, but her place at his side was almost immediately filled by Keith standing ever-so-slightly too close to him. Then he stayed there, even as it got impractical.  Shiro didn't believe for an instant that Lance was this underfoot in front of them by accident, and Hunk's hand on his shoulder from behind couldn't possibly be because Hunk thought he was _really_ tripping over Lance.

By the time they were all standing in their places, feet locked into their ports, Shiro was grinning from ear to ear, but as usual it didn't last. The clips locking around his wrists always gave him an instant of anxiety, a flash that usually went away when he remembered they didn't actually constrain him. This time, the fear didn't vanish entirely, but the feeling of the neural link screwing itself into the back of his suit reminded him, even before he could feel the drift, that the others were more excited than afraid.  That might be enough, once they were in the drift.  It might be enough.

If he had to be careful with his arms because they were controlling the wings, he would work out how he felt about that when he came to it. Keith and Pidge knew perfectly well, by now, that he was sensitive about his arms, and they would help. Or if they didn't, he'd sit around Coran until the man busted out a story that could help him.

Before the control room could say anything to them, Shiro cleared his throat to get the others' attention. "You guys ready for this?" he asked.

"Born ready!" Lance answered, nearly before Shiro had gotten the question out.

Keith's "Absolutely" was almost as fast.

"I've got you, Shiro," Hunk said, and if that hit a little too close to home, at least Shiro knew he meant it kindly.

" _Oh_  yeah," Pidge finished, "Time to see what this baby can do! I _may_  have slipped in a few other mods under the radar."

Shiro laughed. "Well, let's not tell them that. We should check one thing at a time."

He'd decided on _that_ before he ever left his room. As long as he took things one thing at a time, he might believe the others could handle Voltron without him making them work together. As long as he took things one thing at a time, he might believe the wings would work and not just drag them down and leave him where he started, worrying about pushing the others around too much. As long as he took things one thing at a time, he could keep breathing, and feeling, and staying in the drift.

Before the others could answer him, he opened a comm link. "If you've got alignment, we're a go," he told the control center, "Ready for the neural handshake."

Tendo confirmed their alignment from the control room, and Shiro felt the sharp buzz at the back of his head that always preceded the drift. He closed his eyes in the millisecond between the jolt and the drift itself, focusing himself inward.

 _I take nothing with me into the drift_ , he heard. Not his words, and not ones he could say truthfully even if he wanted to. Not words anyone but the Marshal could say, as far as he knew. His first day as a fighter pilot danced tantalizingly at the edges of his vision, colored by the drift, but he let it pass him by. The dried sweat on his palms felt real again, with a vague doubleness in time, before he lost himself more thoroughly in the swirl.

He felt and saw little flashes of other things, Lance playing soccer and Voltron kicking, a waft of steam as Hunk lifted the lid off a pot, a cool night breeze off the desert combing through Keith's hair, but the drift was strong today, even from the outset, and most of the memories pouring through him were little, fragmentary, dismissible.

The ache of Pidge missing her family wove its way through him and back out again and he always knew they were _really_  in the drift when he could feel out toward her with his heart, a tendril of _something_  to make her feel better even though he couldn't have put words to it if he tried. There was a flash of her father (his old commander with the Air Force) eating peas, and he forced himself not to go there, timing his breath with the soft pulse of the drift as it strengthened, and he knew she'd held onto it too, staying in the drift with the rest of them.

Hunk woke up with a start from a breathing pause, his sleep apnea starting again on a night when his CPAP was broken, and Keith shivered under a thin blanket, and Shiro breathed deeply and slowly, in and out, and reached for both of them, letting strands of gold and scarlet wrap gratefully around and through him and keeping his breath steady - steady - calm - to stabilize them both.

Pidge's green was cool and refreshing against him, coloring the drift as she started feeling around for Voltron, running the edges of herself along the technology with her usual affection.  Lance streaked alongside them, more sparkler than ribbon, bursting with love for his family and for them, the two almost indistinguishable when he got like this.  Shiro gave himself over to the drift, letting it carry him faster, to keep up with them.

Outside of the drift, Shiro wondered sometimes if other jaeger pilots saw colors, or if it was just the only way their minds had of processing so many other selves at once. In the drift, he just knew the swirl of them was beautiful as the others timed their breathing to his and they started weaving together, becoming each other and becoming Voltron. He started feeling the jaeger's limbs hovering outside his own, and then it was just _drift_ , pure and strong and solid, even more than usual.

They settled into their body slowly, feeling the weight of it as they reached into the machine and took it on as another layer of skin. Shiro opened his eyes, and for a moment he was seeing through the eyes of the machine, before coming back to himself and the viewscreens in front of him.

The wings pulled at his shoulder blades, heavy and real, and he'd never felt that before. He'd never felt anything _like_ that before. He shifted his weight to compensate and felt the others doing the same, a gentle pulsing of feedback from Lance and Hunk as he bent his knees.

Tendo's voice crackled through the speakers. "We're not ready for that yet, Voltron. Hold steady. We need to calibrate everything."

He almost laughed, and below him, Lance did. "This is _awesome_! We have _wings_!"

It was reassuring that the others could feel the wings too, and everything in Shiro was aching to try to move them, but he kept still instead. There was a blue edge to the feeling that meant Lance's excitement was feeding it, but he was reasonably sure the feeling was his own, as much as any feeling inside Voltron was really just one person's.

The rest of the team was quieter and more focused, but there was a soft hum at the edges of his heartbeat that told him they were excited too, and a little bit . . . proud? The corners of his mouth turned up again as he let himself close his eyes and just feel that, soft and elusive in the center of his chest.

Tendo walked them through their usual steps for calibration, the ones they hadn't needed read off to them in weeks but did, now, because it was going to be different. Four human arms moved in sync inside the cockpit as they checked Voltron's right arm, and it was all Shiro could do not to wave along with everyone as they verified that Keith was perfectly aligned with the machine.

He felt a brief moment of terror wash over him as the need to keep still made him feel like his arm was trapped. It was accompanied by a nauseating certainty that he was about to fall out of the drift, but the rush of affection his teammates sent back to him when they felt his fear was so strong that he had to close his eyes against it, like a heavy gust of wind. Once he was over the initial rush, he held onto the feeling, grabbing onto their affection until he felt stable again.

He focused in on his heartbeat and his breathing, knowing the others were synced to the same internal rhythm as long as they didn't pull their breath out of it to speak. Hunk's stomach rumbled through his own, hungry instead of nauseated for once, and he almost laughed again. He was safe. Drifting. He was in the drift, and so were the others, and all of them were safe.

Pidge rotated her arm to calibrate it, and Shiro felt his own arm moving with her, his human arm following her motions instinctively, but moving only from the elbow down, an imperfect match to the rest of the team. Huh.

Moving his legs with Lance and Hunk to calibrate their bottom half wasn't so stressful, and Shiro let his mind wander, keeping it focused on the task at hand so he didn't send the others too much emotion or too many of this thoughts. His instincts, always stronger with the left arm than the prosthetic, seemed to suggest his upper arm was something else now, and he wasn't sure, yet, what that was going to mean for doing two things at once.

He didn't need to be sure, he reminded himself. Today was about doing one thing at a time. They finished calibrating their legs. One thing down. One thing next.

"Ok, Shiro," Tendo said over the speakers, "We're not sure what to expect here, but there should be room. See what you can do with the wings."

Suddenly, the four teenagers' minds were pressing at the edges of his own, crowding him excitedly and affectionately and much too hard. He took a half step backwards, instinctively, shoulder blades flaring back and out in a motion he didn't recognize.

Voltron's wings fluttered behind them, pinion feathers spreading out and banging together because the rest of the wings weren't far enough apart. The five of them yelped together as their feathers collided and he instinctively pulled his upper arms up, lifting their wings out over their shoulders. The pinions opened out farther once they had the room, the wings expanding to their full size.

Cheers came through the speakers, but Shiro could barely hear the control room through his teammates' victorious shouting.

"That's - I don't know if that's calibrated or not, actually, but it's really something," Tendo told them, "You should see it from out here."

A devilish smile pulled at Shiro's mouth, and he wasn't sure whose idea it was to show off with a fully-fledged flap of their new appendages, but they were doing it before he could sort through whether it was a good idea or not. He focused on their shared body, letting the wings tell him what to do inside the frail shell of the cockpit. He suspected he was using muscles he'd never used before, but they were working, and that was what counted. The flap of their wings sent a gust of wind through the hangar that shook some of the other jaegers.

Tendo laughed, and Coran and Allura patched in through the comm system to let Voltron hear them cheering.

"That almost knocked us straight over!" Coran said excitedly, "I can't wait to see what you lot do with those in battle."

Allura giggled, "Coran! Let them finish! We can talk again when we make it outside for their _real_  training."

"Can't wait!" Shiro replied, shocked to find that it was true. It wasn't just true because Lance and Keith were filtering through him, or because Pidge's endless curiosity wanted the test. It was true all the way around, for all of them together, except that Hunk didn't like flying. Shiro felt Hunk's reluctance, pulling at his leg, and sent out a pulse of affection and reassurance.

And then he was sure of it. Sure of all of it. He had his wings, and he had his old job, still, in the back of his mind, and they were all going to be alright. They were all going to be able to drive Voltron together, and he wasn't going to ruin it, or them.  _They were going to be alright_.

"You guys ready to run?" he asked the others, feeling more alive than he had in over a year, like he might be shining as bright as Lance, like he might be able to drive the fear out of the rest of them with nothing but the brightness of his heart.

"Yeah!" The other four, cheering in perfect unison, were enough to drown out the control center's protests, and Voltron charged toward the door so fast Tendo didn't really have any choice but to open it. They charged out onto the beach, into the open air, the Castle following closely behind them as Coran and Allura, too, ignored instructions to wait.

Somewhere in the middle of their first awkward attempts at flight, Shiro wondered if it really _was_  smart for him to give up sorting through their ideas and keeping the others in line. He wondered how it would be when they weren't so wrapped up in the same task, when they weren't so well aligned, when the drift wasn't so strong.

But he'd sent Hunk reassurance when he needed it, even with his wings to distract him, and it was good to feel free, to feel the others lifting him up, to feel them focused on him instead of the other way around, and then to give that focus back when they needed it to drag themselves off the ground. And maybe it would be ok. And maybe it would be enough. And maybe this was what they were always meant to be from the start.

The rest of Voltron's body worked like the well-oiled machine it was, arms and legs pumping comfortably, familiar as before, and Shiro flailed his wings like the most desperate of plummeting fledglings, and their first successful flight took three hours to achieve and lasted 14 perfect, vibrant, laughing seconds.

They went back into the hangar to the sound of cheers, and got slapped on the back and shoved around affectionately on their way out of Voltron, and Shiro's shoulder blades ached with overstrained muscles, but he'd never felt lighter.


End file.
